


The Hounds of Heaven

by JohnAmendAll



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-10-07
Updated: 2010-10-07
Packaged: 2017-11-15 03:02:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,127
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/522432
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JohnAmendAll/pseuds/JohnAmendAll
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bishop Octavian (who isn't a Bishop yet) and Time Agent Jack Harkness (who hasn't started calling himself that yet) have tracked down a notorious war criminal.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Hounds of Heaven

The office of the Minister of Justice was designed to make its owner look more than human. The Minister's chair, set on a daïs behind the marble-topped desk, was in fact the ancient throne of the Hereditary Regents of Kenya, the spoil of some long-forgotten war. The walls were lined with lesser tables, inlaid with rare wood and minerals, and similarly exquisite cabinets. Above the furniture, portraits of past incumbents stared down with judicial approval. Here, trembling supplicants were assured, was someone greater than mortal, a demigod or a Titan.

However, the room's atmosphere of judicial impartiality, even judicial indifference, to petty external considerations, was diminishing all the time. For days, the distant shudder of explosions and the whine of sonic weaponry had been audible even through the layer upon layer of armour and force fields protecting the building. Each day, the number of toadies and underlings creeping into the room had become fewer. For the last forty-eight hours, nobody had left or entered, and even communication with the outside world had been cut off entirely. No help was coming from loyalist forces. The simple camp bed and portable sanitary unit in one corner carried uncomfortable overtones of a prison cell.

Opposite the Minister's desk, directly in his line of vision, were the double doors that were the principal entrance to the room. Twice as high as a man, and broad in proportion, they were reinforced with every contrivance that physics and modern science could devise. It had been claimed by the engineers who built them that their electronic locks were uncrackable, even by a Dalek's quantum computers, that they could withstand the blast of a fusion tank without a scratch.

Alone in the room behind his desk, the Minister watched as blue light flared around the edges of the doors. They tumbled into the room, still uselessly locked together, embedding themselves in the floor with a thump that felt less like a sound than a physical blow.

He'd been expecting them to send an army. But only two men stepped over the ruined threshold. Both were wearing combat armour, unrelieved black save for the badge of the Maltese cross on their arms. The Church Militant, then. The elite, or what passed for it in that egalitarian rabble. That was something, he supposed. They'd done him the courtesy of sending their best troops for him.

"Magnus Greel?" one of them asked. He waited for an answer, but the Minister remained silent and immobile behind his desk. He saw no reason to follow his enemies' agenda.

"I have an ID match," the other man said. "Confirmed."

By now, the two clerics were paces into the office. None of the last-ditch weapons, the blasters built into the desk or the machine-guns concealed behind the elaborate wall decorations, had even fired. By now they should have reduced any unauthorised intruder to pulp, but it was clear that their power or control systems had been compromised.

"Let me introduce myself, sir," the first cleric said. "My name is Father Octavian, Archdeacon first class. Your defences are down, your guards scattered or fallen. Surrender now, and face the justice you have denied your victims."

"And if I choose not to?" Greel asked, a sneer twisting his handsome features.

"Then, sir, you should prepare yourself for a higher judgement. If that is your choice, I am authorised to take your confession, should you choose to make one."

"And then what? A bullet in my brain? You hypocrite. Doesn't your precious holy book say not to kill?"

He realised as he spat out the words that he'd made a mistake. The clerics would have been taught how to counter that argument before they'd even made acolyte.

"That is a matter for my conscience," Octavian replied calmly. "I suggest that your own is in more urgent need of attention."

Greel rose to his feet, gathering his dignity about him.

"Then," he said, "since you leave me no choice, I shall–"

He had been holding the pistol the whole time, concealed from view behind his desk. Now, he fired four times, twice at each cleric, aiming for their hearts. Explosions blossomed before them as their armour absorbed the blast, but he had them off balance for a moment, and a moment was all he needed. As their answering gunshots passed through where he had been, he was already on the move, hurling himself into the nearest cabinet. The air filled with the howl of rending spacetime, and white light glared from the translucent disc that had seemed merely to be the centrepiece of the cabinet's door.

"Zygma energy!" the second cleric shouted. Giving his colleague no time to reply, he dragged both of them to the ground. Unseen by either of them, the cabinet faded from view in a maelstrom of harsh luminescence.

When the two clerics cautiously raised their heads, they found themselves, and the area around them, the only untouched part of the room. The huge desk had protected them, and was now a distorted wreck, looking as if its timber and marble, not to mention the papers and writing implements that had been on it, had melted and run like wax. Of the Regents' throne, nothing was left except a jagged metal frame. None of the other furniture had fared any better, and the pictures were gone entirely, leaving only shadowy skull-like faces etched into the walls.

"If he survived that, he has escaped us once more," Octavian said, looking at the blackened gouge in the wall where the cabinet had stood.

"Yeah." The second cleric glanced around. "Wouldn't like to be him now. He was right in the middle of that energy burst. You saw what it did to this lot. Just imagine what it did to him. A pity, really."

"That he did not dare to face the consequences of his actions?"

"I meant more... he was sort of handsome. I would. I mean, if he wasn't a war criminal and I–"

"And you had not sworn an oath of chastity." Octavian shook his head. "You may have been recruited by the Time Agency, Brother Sebastian, but that does not excuse you from your vows as a member of the Church. Maybe you need to reconsider your vocation."

"Maybe..." Sebastian checked his wrist computer. "I'll get back to the Agency. See if we can work out where he was trying to get to – and when. Actually, I think I'd better carry you out of here, too, before all that radiation penetrates our armour. Hold on tight."

"If I didn't know better, Brother, I'd say you were coming up with flimsy excuses to embrace me."

"If you didn't know better," Sebastian replied, with a grin.

A moment later, the room was empty.


End file.
